A novel crosslinked starch-graft-polyacrylamide-co-sodium xanthate (CSAX) was synthesized by grafting copolymerization reactions of crosslinked corn starch, acrylamide (AM), and sodium xanthate, using epichlorohydrin (EPI) as crosslinking reagent and ceric ammonium nitrate as initiator in aqueous Solution. The effects of some factors, such as crosslinker, initiator, AM, NaOH and so forth, on the flocculation were investigated in terms of efficiency of grafting (% GE), grafting percentage (% GP), and viscosity averaged molecular weight (M) of the PAM pendant chains. The results showed that the CSAX was successfully synthesized the different number and length of grafted PAM pendant chains and with the functions of removing both substance causing turbidity and heavy metal ions from aqueous Solution. Under Optimum synthesis conditions, CSAX exhibited excellent performances: the rate of turbidity removal (% T) reached 98.4%, and the rate of Cu2+ removal (% R) reached 99.2%, in water treatment, respectively. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 112:135-141, 2009